Wednesday, September 3, 2025

The Bends

One Liner: Kings of Leon-esque rock and roll from LSU Tigers
Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but this is rock and roll
Home: Baton Rouge

Poster Position: Third Quarter - Line 20

Day: Sunday
Weekend Two Only.

BMI Stage at 5:15 (they get the top show for that stage, interesting)

Thoughts:  I saw a great license plate the other day that said SWMPOND and decided that Swim Pond is a pretty great band name.  Brings to mind summertime innocence and cannonballs and sun-dappled coolness in nature.  That obviously has nothing to do with this band, but I absolutely immediately think of Radiohead when I see this band name.  No way not to.

But, this is not a Radiohead band at all.  This is The Kings of Leon, if the Kings of Leon were from Baton Rouge and only had four songs.  Also of note, Earl Sweatshirt and Mr. Bungle also had songs called The Bends.  Sort of makes me laugh to think that maybe Radiohead named their hit after a Mr. Bungle song that came out in the same year.  But having a name that sounds like a hugely popular album makes it harder to find information about these bros.  Also, there is a Radiohead tribute band called The Bends (the "Midwest's premier Radiohead tribute band"!), which similarly makes this harder.  Looks like there are other tribute bands using that name as well.  

But these dudes met at LSU with two childhood friends linking up with two other fellas to make rock and roll.  They got notoriety playing college bars and whatnot, selling out the cool-ass venue there called The Varsity.  The top song of their extensive four-song catalog is "Makeup."  2.2 million streams.

Stone cold KOL from the first lick.  I like it though.  KOL is a great band to get compared to!  Maybe they will release an album by the time they come to town - sort of reminds me of that West 22nd band who was at the Fest last year and was pretty solid.  I'd go check this out.

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